lacking in their enjoyments; but they miss its anxieties, and they have not to pay for the keeping in order of all those splendours upon which their eyes daily repose.
To talk of taste in connection with Paris seems as unnecessary to-day as to speak of coals in Newcastle. And yet it is the prevalence of taste everywhere that perpetually surprises inhabitants of less privileged places. Whatever these people do, whatever they make, whatever they wear, the result is pleasing to the eye. If the picturesque is not always achieved, be sure neatness is. Give a poor woman an old skirt or bodice, and instantly will she go home, take it to pieces, and make a new skirt or bodice out of it that will gladden the eye, once upon her. So in her modest way will she improve the general view, and freshen up a porter's lodge or little doorway. It is by the united action of all those various devices of a race of unerring taste and an indestructible sense of neatness, that Paris, in all its open corners, and byways, and thoroughfares, is, by outward manifestations, the home of permanent and unchequered grace and suavity.
It is a particularly pleasant feature of Parisian life that people of small means can live both decently and economically there. Of course, economy is the chief virtue of the race; and though it would be difficult to name a less attractive one, because of its close alliance to
